You’d expect someone who builds websites for a living to tell you templates are beneath you. I won’t, because it isn’t true. Squarespace, and platforms like it, are genuinely good now - and for some businesses at some stages, they’re exactly the right call.
But there’s a point where the template starts quietly costing you more than the custom build would have. Knowing which side of that line you’re on is worth more than any platform comparison chart. Here’s the honest version.
When Squarespace is the right answer
You’re early and the offer is still moving. If you’re still working out what you sell, to whom, at what price, don’t commission a website - the brief will be wrong by launch. A clean template site gets you live, lets you test the message, and costs little to throw away when the business finds its shape. That’s not a compromise; that’s the correct sequencing.
The website is a business card, not a channel. Some businesses genuinely just need an address on the internet - referrals do the selling, the site confirms you’re real. A well-set-up template does that job perfectly well.
Budget is the binding constraint. A decent template site done carefully beats a cheap “custom” site done badly, every time. If the realistic budget is under a couple of thousand pounds, stay on a platform and spend the difference on photography - imagery lifts a template more than code does.
The catch with all three: the template only performs if it’s set up with discipline. Real brand, real photography, tight copy, sensible structure. A default template with stock imagery isn’t a website, it’s a placeholder.
When the custom build starts paying for itself
The website has a revenue job. The moment the site is supposed to convert - turn searches into enquiries, visitors into booked calls - the constraints of a template start showing. Page speed you can’t fully control, layouts that fight your content, structures bent around someone else’s design system. A custom build is designed backwards from the conversion, not forwards from a theme.
Search is part of the plan. Templates can rank, but you’re carrying weight they add - heavier pages, generic markup, limited control over the technical detail. A custom static build gives you the whole toolkit: clean semantic structure, proper schema, near-instant loads. My own site is built this way, and it’s how a one-person studio holds perfect accessibility and best-practice scores.
AI assistants are reading your site now. This is the new one, and it’s not hype: a growing share of buyers first meet you through ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI answers - and those systems read structure, not vibes. Clean markup, proper schema and fast, parseable pages are how you stay quotable. It’s a real and rising advantage of a build you fully control.
You’re tired of the brand not quite fitting. Every template is a set of someone else’s decisions. If you find yourself bending your brand to fit the theme - the typography nearly right, the layout nearly working - that friction is the signal you’ve outgrown it.
The honest cost comparison
A template site costs a few hundred pounds a year plus your time - or £1,000-£3,000 if someone sets it up properly for you. My strategy-led custom builds start at £7,500 + VAT, with brand assets and photography included - because a website is only as good as what’s in it.
The real comparison isn’t the price tags, it’s the payback. If a custom site converts even slightly better on traffic you’re already earning, it recovers the difference - then keeps compounding. If the site has no revenue job yet, that maths doesn’t run, and you should keep the template. That’s the whole decision.
The sequence that works
- Strategy first, always. Who the site convinces, of what, towards which action. This is true on any platform.
- Template while the business finds its shape. No shame in it - ship, learn, adjust.
- Custom when the site becomes infrastructure. When search, conversion and brand precision start driving revenue, build properly - once, well.
The wrong moves are the extremes: paying custom money before there’s a strategy to build on, or sitting on a template for years while it quietly leaks enquiries you never see.
If you’re not sure which side of the line you’re on, that’s a twenty-minute conversation, not a proposal.
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